Reading in FYW

Reading, for this course, establishes the context (key words or concepts, historical or local detail, ideas, problems, questions), and as the course progresses, the archive of readings serves as a kind of “mini-discipline” for class members. Reading includes, too, the various projects that have emerged from the course. From the moment a new text is assigned, students can frame it as a potential source for a writing project, not simply an object of study. So, on a first day of a reading, rather than having an open discussion “about the text,” we might ask:

  • How would you write about this text? What makes it promising as a text to work with?
  • How does this text advance the conversation we’ve been having to this point? How might it link to or extend what we’ve built so far?
  • How does this new text and our responses to it allow us to think about the role writing plays in making meaning?